Hungary Is Making Europe’s Migrant Crisis Worse

Migrants continue to risk dangerous passage across the Mediterranean in search of sanctuary from violence in the Middle East and Africa.CreditCreditBram Janssen/Associated Press

Another summer has passed, and still there seems to be no lasting solution to one of the great humanitarian conundrums of our time: how to resettle the thousands of migrants who continue to risk dangerous passage across the Mediterranean in search of sanctuary from violence in the Middle East and Africa. The number of arrivals in Greece has steadily declined since 2015, after measures that all but closed the route from Turkey. But the problem will remain so long as conflict and poverty drive people to take huge risks in the hope of reaching Europe.

It is indisputably a difficult problem, but it has not been made easier by the inhospitable attitudes of some of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe — Hungary in particular — which have stubbornly blocked entry to refugees. This is a shame, given that back in 1989, Hungary led the way in opening its borders to let the people of Communist-ruled Eastern Europe move freely between East and West. Effectively throwing its lot in with the West, Hungary declared then that it was guided “by generally accepted international principles of human rights and humanitarian consideration.”

No longer, it seems. When the European Union decided in the summer of 2015 to help Italy and Greece cope with a huge wave of migration by resettling 120,000 people in other European countries, Hungary and Slovakia took the decision to the Court of Justice of the European Union. On Wednesday, the court threw out their case, which seemed only to stiffen Hungary’s opposition. With unconscious incongruity, the country’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, angrily declared that “politics has raped European law and values,” vowing that no one would be relocated to Hungary against its wishes.

The Court of Justice decision will not greatly improve the lot of migrants, and not just because of Hungary’s callousness. The program for migrants from Greece and Italy has resettled barely a quarter of the people it was supposed to help, and Eastern European countries were allotted a tiny fraction to begin with. And the European Union does not have the tools to effectively punish recalcitrant nations.

Still, it is incumbent on Europe to continue to look for humanitarian solutions, whether by helping to resolve the conflicts or ease the poverty that drive people to flee, or by making room for those who reach its shores. That effort and burden must be shared, and it must be based on international law and European values, which include tolerance, cultural diversity, protection of minorities and a rejection of xenophobia.

Hungary and its neighbors are not alone in trying to keep immigrants out. President Trump has set a scandalous example by his demagogic policy on immigration, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union was based largely on blocking immigrants, and populist and nationalist parties have exploited immigration to gain strength in many other European nations.

But it is particularly sad to see countries that so poignantly celebrated the lifting of the Iron Curtain now argue, as Hungary does, that being asked to take in a small number of Muslim immigrants is somehow a violation of European laws and values. Hungary’s hard-line prime minister, Viktor Orban, has gone so far as to ask for European Union money to tighten his border against migrants — an arrogant request promptly dismissed by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. The Court of Justice ruling should stand as a strong reminder to Hungary and its neighbors that the principles of human rights and humanitarian considerations they once so ardently embraced are not optional.